Guggenheim Takes Bed of Razors, Baseball Bat Monk to Asia

By Frederik Balfour -
Oct 30, 2013

A bed made of razor blades, a
Buddhist monk carved from a baseball bat, and minimalist goats
are on display at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center.

“No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast
Asia” features works specifically acquired by the Guggenheim
Museum to create the touring show of artists you won’t find at
many auctions or international art fairs.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, a refugee who returned from the U.S. to
Vietnam 10 years ago, examines questions of war, cultural
imperialism and religion. By carving the likeness of the
protesting Buddhist monk who self-immolated in Saigon in 1963
from a Louisville Slugger, he imbues the bat with menacing
double meaning.

U.S. imperialism is also evoked in Philippine painter
Norberto Roldan’s “F-16,” (2012), which juxtaposes a fighter
jet over Afghanistan with text from President William McKinley’s
speech justifying American manifest destiny in its colonization
of the Philippines.

Nanny State

Singaporean Tang Da Wu’s “Our Children” (2012) is based
on a Chinese parable where a young boy is humbled at the sight
of a baby goat fed by its mother. His minimalist steel-and-glass
sculpture with a milk bottle could also be read as a veiled
reference to Singapore as a nanny state.

The question of the lack of assimilation in neighboring
Malaysia is examined in photographs by Vincent Leong. In
“Keeping up With the Abdullahs” 1 and 2, he dresses two
groups, one Chinese, the other Indian, in Malay costumes and
makes them pose as they would for traditional 19th-century
portraits, except that some are holding Ipads or mops.

Pakistan’s Bani Abidi also uses humor in photographs and
video to provide a light-hearted look at Muhammed Bin Qasim, an
8th-century general venerated in post-partition South Asia. The
trilogy “The Boy Who Got Tired of Posing” shows a child
dressed up as the hero in a photo studio posing first astride a
plastic horse on wheels, then with a sword and robe, and finally
fleeing the third frame.